The product is painless to install, but its worth describing some of the technical aspects of loading the program to a Palm. Like the Palm platform, CitySync is Mac and Windows compatible, so owners of either platform can be served.

On a 2 MB Handspring Visor there is more than enough room to store the information CitySync provides. After installing the product on the hard drive, specific cities were able to be uploaded seamlessly One caveat: although many cities are provided, purchasing the software allows only four cities to be installed.

Due to the limited window space, the interface is necessarily complicated. The main screen is icon based, though, and easy to understand. Once you select a hotel or location for more information, things get more confusing. There are a series of drop-down menus that guide you through the vast number of choices. Its easy to understand that one series of drop-downs is, for example, a list of neighbourhoods within a section of Paris.

Where CitySync is truly exemplary, though, is in two areas: maps and reviews. These two key elements are also linked, which is an impressive and much-needed functionality. (The makers also include a notepad function where you, the user, can make additional comments as if writing in the margins of a Lonely Planet guidebook.) The maps are clear and well marked, and the content of the reviews is wildly well written. For example, match these introductory sentences to the city they describe:

• "On a cold, brutally windy day, when the temperature is subzero and strong gusts keep you from walking down the street, you may find yourself wondering who the hell decided to build a city and settle here?"
• "[This is a city] that demands the suspension of disbelief--the moment you start to take it seriously you miss the point."
• "[City dwellers] may talk fast and walk fast and pay 10 dollars for a sandwich, but this megacity sometimes demands that you assault it with a game plan."
• "First-time visitors often arrive with all sorts of expectations: of grand vistas, of highbrow intellectuals pontificating in street-side cafes, of romance, of naughty nightclub revues."